Posted
by
kdawsonon Tuesday March 16, 2010 @04:05PM
from the twist-of-lemon-please dept.

JoshuaInNippon writes "Four major Japanese car manufacturers and one power company (Mitsubishi, Nissan, Subaru, Toyota, and Tokyo Electric) have teamed up with over 150 business and government entities in Japan to form a group to promote standardization in electric vehicle chargers and charging stations. The group hopes to leverage current Japanese electric vehicle technology and spread standardization throughout the country, as well as aim towards worldwide acceptance of their standardized charger model. In a very Japanese manner, the group has decided to call themselves 'CHAdeMO,' a play on the English words 'charge' and 'move,' as well as a Japanese pun that encourages tea-drinking while waiting the 15+ minutes it will take to charge one's vehicle battery."

Chargedonaygo. You've got charge, go, and chardonay, one of many alcoholic beverages you'll be able to drink and then sober up before your car is done charging since I have a hunch that our friendly oil industry lobbyist friends might make sure we're safe by limiting the amount of power that can be transferred.

Also because it will probably take much more time to charge the latest electric assault vehicle. Just because we're going to go electric doesn't mean we're going to lose our love of ridiculously hug

Don't forget about the similarly powered vehicles. GM had the Camaro SS and Firebird TransAm WS/6, both similar in power, weight, and handling characteristics to the Corvette. The biggest difference (at least to me) was that the F-bodies have 4 seats, and cupholders.:)

I think he was probably referring to the soccer moms in their F650 [streetfire.net], EM-50 [cloudster.com], or Knight XV [blogspot.com].

Gotta disagree here. While I've never owned a Porsche or a Corvette, I have owned a big bore sports motorcycle with similar or better performance.

Sure it was fun for a while, but the need to watch the speedo everywhere I went to keep my license wore thin. It was frustrating to have so much power on tap and never being able to use it. The only plus in traffic was that lane changing was "point and shoot".

Compare/Contrast with my Honda CB200 that was small, light and nimble, but you needed to use what power it

20 minute commute? What metropolitan area to you live in? Everyone I know drives for at least an hour, sometimes up to 2 hours each way in traffic.

And all for cheap housing. If we could somehow migrate away from suburban and exurban sprawl and actually create large, comfortable urban lodging for families close to work, it'd be no problem to own big landlubber vehicles so you can have your weekend fun out in West Virginia... you'd probably save more gas by living closer to work than by buying extra fuel

Live in the concrete hell that is a modern American city? No. I'd probably have an attack of claustrophobia. Also your concept of "large" is incompatible with having to squeeze those ~15 million ex-suburbanites into the small area a city occupies. You'd be left with homes about the size of one dorm per family (like in Asimov's Caves of Steel).

Now maybe if you moved the workplaces to the suburbs, rather than concentrating them all inside the city, you could find a solution. I've never understood why all companies want to locate themselves in Baltimore when there's plenty of room in nearby Frederick or Bel Air or Annapolis.

Well I dunno what it's like on the coast, but it's really tempting to move to Chicago (or the suburbs thereof) because that's where all the jobs are. I imagine that all the jobs are there because a lot of programmers live around Chicago, for some inexplicable reason...

Now maybe if you moved the workplaces to the suburbs, rather than concentrating them all inside the city, you could find a solution.

Mixed zoning doesn't work because people can't pickup their houses and move when their company flops or they lose their job. So instead they end up driving ridiculous distances and unpredictable paths in order to keep their family together. It is even worse when a married couple needs to have both adults working. Now they need room for 2 cars, take up 2 commutes, and it will be really unlikely for both people live next to work.

The average commute in Rochester NY is 20 minutes for 750 thousand people. Mine is 15 minutes without snow. I work inside city limits, and live in a relative country setting. Once you get outside the major cities commutes fall pretty quickly.

I live in a city with 1 million people, and my commute is under 20 minutes. Ten of those minutes are spent driving through the campus at 20 mph.

I used to live in a city with a metro population of 2 million (and huge traffic problems, due to it being on a peninsula with two bridges -- no, not San Francisco, but the traffic patterns were similar), and I had a 15 minute commute.

Living far from work is a choice, one which I choose not to make. You can

>>>you'll be able to drink and then sober up before your car is done charging since I have a hunch that our friendly oil industry lobbyist friends might make sure we're safe by limiting the amount of power>>>

Power is usually limited so that the battery does not blowup. Batteries like to be slow-charged at 1/10th C over several hours. Faster charging will work, but it typically damages the internal components and causes premature death, while the "15 minute" charging suggested by the arti

Power is usually limited so that the battery does not blowup. Batteries like to be slow-charged at 1/10th C over several hours. Faster charging will work, but it typically damages the internal components and causes premature death, while the "15 minute" charging suggested by the article would make most batteries explode.

Which makes me wonder - How on earth did the Japanese develop 15 minute charging? That's a LOT of energy to dump into a car.

Most of the fast vehicle chargers I have seen use a coolant (usually water) that circulates through the battery pack during charging. Batteries can be harmed when charged quickly because charging is not 100% efficient due to the internal resistance of the batteries. The waste energy is heat that is usually just radiated away in a normal slow charge but can build up enough in a fast charge to damage your batteries. Cooling the pack using an external mechanism is perfect for this application. For normal charging you can just plug in the electrical connection, or for quick charging you can have 2 extra coolant lines on the connector to pump away excess heat.

How on earth did the Japanese develop 15 minute charging? That's a LOT of energy to dump into a car.

To put this in perspective of what we are accustomed to:

1 gallon of gas =~ 120MJAverage gas pump =~ 5-10 gpm

120MJ * 7.5 gpm * (1min/60sec) = 15 Megawatts

To put 15 Megawatts in perspective, the Niagara Falls hydroelectric plant, one of the biggest plants feeding the Eastern Seaboard, pumps out 2.4GW...which is less than the combined power of the gas pumps within a 5-mile radius

reading this I can't help but think of JAMMA [wikipedia.org] which is the standard interface for arcade main boards. It was decided upon by a group of Japanese arcade manufacturers and quickly became the world wide standard. Though it really only lasted until the standard upright arcade machine was replaced by ridiculous simulators that didn't fit into the JAMMA design anymore.

My dad thinks an electric car could be powered by tying a generator to the wheels, and therefore never need to charge the battery, because the spinning wheels would keep it charged.

I wasted about a half hour of my life explaining why this won't work (because more energy is used moving the car than recovered by the wheel-generators), but when he started getting angry and insisting it's a conspiracy by the oil companies, I decided I'd had enough. Let the idiot continue to believe stupid stuff. Or put anothe

How many cars are driven in both Japan and the USA, it's not a big problem, If Japan can handle half the country at 50hz and half the country at 60hz I'm sure the 3 or 4 cars made for the US standard will be able to get an adapter to handle Japanese recharging stations.

You sickening, worthless, un-American, communist. America should let the free market come up with at least 3 competing, mutually incompatible charging standards. Each with its own DRM system to prevent nimbler third parties from offering cheaper alternatives! Ideally, chargers shouldn't even be interoperable between vehicle lines produced by the same company.

You're pretty un-American yourself. You forgot to mention that the incompatible plugs must be heavily patented to avoid the possibility of adapters and covered with safety stickers saying stuff like "DO NOT PUT IN BABY'S MOUTH".

How do you think America came-up with standardized electric plugs today? Or firehose connections? Or timezones? It wasn't via government mandate, but by voluntary association between companies to make their systems compatible.

The communist way would be much better people waiting in long lines to use the only recharge station because nobody is motivated to innovate except for the threat of the trips to the gulag, I mean reeducation camp, wait no work camp.

America should let the free market come up with at least 3 competing, mutually incompatible charging standards. Each with its own DRM system to prevent nimbler third parties from offering cheaper alternatives!

LG, Apple, and Motorola are all showing tech demos of their chargers next week, with the trade shows being sponsored by Verizon and AT&T. Rumor has it that the LG charger's locking mechanism will break off sometime before you're finished paying your car loan, Apple's charger is a massive dock connector that's already compatible with a huge range of iCar accessories, and Motorola's charger will be covered under warranty, but any rust on the vehicle's underbody will somehow void the warranty on the charg

We Americans need to come up with our own, incompatible, standard for charging vehicles.

No problem dude we already have at least two incompatible charger standards.

SAE J1772 and IEC 62196

The SAE standard is supported by all the domestic manufacturers, AND THE JAPANESE whom supposedly, according to the article, want yet another standard. Probably SONY wants a battery charger with a root kit or something like that.

The IEC standard, which apparently no one wants to use, is basically the SAE on steroids with a bunch more control/DRM pins.

E-vehicle companies are looking at commercial charging: 400-some volts, 60 AMPs. You can recharge during a meal instead of overnight then. You wont have these in houses, but at workplaces and businesses.

It's short for "Waving your Hands like a Bloody Loony" at the bored student in the petrol station kiosk in order to divert his attention away from his "Media Studies" course book so he can turn the fuel pump on.

It sure would be nice if all the cellphone manufacturers would get together and come up with a standard charger. I typically have to replace my phone every 2-3 years, and I like having at least 2 chargers (one at home and one at work), and it really irks me that I have to buy new chargers each time, because the new phones are never compatible with the old chargers, even though they're all from the same manufacturer. And even more annoying is that my wife's phone uses a different charger than mine, so we can

Many newer phones use a USB-mini or USB-micro port for charging. Not all of them, of course, but you could shop for phones that have it, and vote with your dollars.

My Blackberry uses a USB-mini, which means I can charge it off my laptop, and car chargers are just a few bucks. USB charging capability was also one of the major criteria when we shopped for a new phone for my wife (one of the disqualifying points for an iPhone). Her phone also uses USB-mini. My bluetooth headset uses USB-micro, so I keep an adapter near the charging shelf so I can charge that when I need to off the same adapter. The only oddball device is my wife's iPod Touch.

As a bonus, the USB-mini port allows us to:
- Connect the phone to computers at the same time the phone is charging, on the same cable. This is both for Internet access (tethering) and for copying music, pictures, etc to and from the phones (USB mass media support on the SD chips we put into the phones).
- Plug the phone into her car stereo (which has a standard USB port) and, since both phones support mass media (like a USB thumb drive), listen to music from our phones. Also while the phone is charging.

Overall, I'd say next time you shop for a phone, make sure it has a standard connector that can be used for simultaneous power and data. USB's about the only game in that particular town right now, though if you want to go all-Apple the "Apple Connector" might be your chosen standard.

The iPhone can use USB as a power source, but (unless they've added it) it lacks one of the standard USB connectors on the PHONE side.

In other words, I have a charging cable I bought for $5 in my car. One side has a "cigarette lighter" plug, the other has a USB-mini plug that plugs into my phone.

I fully realize it's possible to charge an iPhone over a USB connector, and it's the same connection that provides power (my wife has an iPod Touch). But that requires a special cable - the PHONE side is not USB standard.

I guess you're stupid, ignorant or a bigot.

It is possible to disagree with someone, or attempt to point out some information you think that person might not have, without dropping to the level of insult.

Not for one so thoroughly touched by the Reality Distortion Field. I'm afraid the psychosis has run deep, and any attempt to identify a shortcoming or deficiency of an Apple-brand product can only provoke unthinking and violent opposition.

For the same reason we don't swap tires out instead of getting a flat fixed. I don't want the tire you have abused for 30k miles, I want my much newer tire, which has never been run low on air or bounced off a curb, back on my car.

I've heard a lot of people talk about swappable batteries as a solution to the charging time problem, but I really don't see how it can work. The problem is, batteries are VERY expensive, and they have a finite lifetime. A new battery would then be much more costly than an old one. The result is that after the swap, you could be left with a battery that is either (a) much more valuable, or (b) much less valuable than the one you started with. Neither of these scenarios would be appealing to all parties

I see the problem with swappable batteries rather in crash safety. Battery packs are huge and heavy, so they carry a tremendous momentum in case of a crash. To prevent them to rip loose, you have to secure them really tight, which somewhat conflicts with easy replacement.

I've said this before, in order for this to work, interchangeable batteries need a standardized exchange like a 20 lb propane tank.

They need to be so dead simple that people who do not understand electronics and can't connect jumper cables now, won't mind unhooking and reattaching the connector to Multi-Hundred AmpHour batteries IN THE RAIN.

"Why wait around for the batteries to charge when you could have standard interchangeable battery packs?"

This comes up every time rechargeable cars comes up, and it is still just as wrong now as the first time.

First of all, not all batteries will be the same. Most of the battery chemistries in use for electric cars have a finite cycle life. So, you pull into the station with your brand-spanking-new, only one charge/discharge cycle battery, and you get it swapped out for the battery I left there with 10000 cycles on it, that has a quarter the capacity. True, you could have the pack record and report its charge cycle history, but that doesn't stop the fact that the only "charged" battery the station has right now is my hammered to death pack, and you are getting screwed on the deal.

Second of all, these packs are HEAVY. Not just the 40 kg your gas tank is, but more like several HUNDRED kilograms. They have to be an integral part of the car's frame, or else in a collision they are going to play Hulk and "HULK SMASH!" their way through the rest of the car (and likely you!). Making something that is BOTH well attached to the car's frame AND easily removable is like making a pocket sized 52" display.

Third of all is the machinery to pull that pack out of your car. It has to be automated, or it has to be operated by a trained operator. When was the last time you had somebody else pump your gas? OK, so skip the trained operator, it has to be automated such that a) BillyBob can "run" it, b) it can handle the car being parked at any number of weird angles to the system, c) it won't crush Little Billy who gets in the way, and d) it POSITIVELY CANNOT have ANY chance of scratching the paint, because BillyBob *WILL* accuse the station of just that, even when the "scratch" has doe fur and hoofprints!

Fourth of all is the issue of what happens if you run out of power out on the road. Right now it is no big deal for [AAA|The Highway Patrol|a passing motorist|A tow truck] to get you a gallon or two of gas so you can make it to a gas station. Good luck with swapping the battery pack in the road. OR you have to have a charging port + a special portable charging system to get you the equivalent of that "couple of gallons" of gas.

I see you are a fan of mine, and I hope my pointing this out won't change that, but - there are good reasons swapping batteries, while great for your phone, doesn't scale to your car.

I can buy Duracell, Energiser, Panasonic, Phillips, el cheapo AA, AAA etc. batteries and they'll all work in my camera or TV remote. I have Energiser and Sony rechargeables. You can buy replacement laptop batteries. Why the heck would it be difficult to do the same for electric vehicles?

I can buy Duracell, Energiser, Panasonic, Phillips, el cheapo AA, AAA etc. batteries and they'll all work in my camera or TV remote. I have Energiser and Sony rechargeables. You can buy replacement laptop batteries. Why the heck would it be difficult to do the same for electric vehicles?

Maybe because the battery packs on electric vehicles weigh in excess of 500 lbs?

Maybe because the battery packs on electric vehicles weigh in excess of 500 lbs?

Which is why they'd be replaced by a machine! A machine can wash my car, so a machine should be able to find the battery compartment, unlock it, open it, remove the old battery pack, insert the new one, close the door and lock it again.

In over 100 years of the modern automobile, auto manufactures have not standardized on a location for the gas tank opening. You don't even have consistency between different models of the same manufacturer.

Next time you're in the grocery store, count how many different sizes of batteries they stock. Now imagine the floor space required to do the same with batteries big enough to power a car. We're early enough in this game that battery design is still changing fairly frequently - power output and size requirements. Seems to me that standardizing the plug is the first step, once the battery tech stabilizes, maybe swapping will be more feasible.

Why not just develop a design to swap out batteries through an automated crane? Pull in, the robot arm removes your empty battery and replaces it with a full one. The empty battery charges at whatever pace the 'gas' station deems necessary (maybe overnight when prices are lower) and the driver has a full charge within seconds. I'm almost certain I saw this idea put forth on/. in the past.

"Why not just develop a design to swap out batteries through an automated crane? Pull in, the robot arm removes your empty battery and replaces it with a full one. The empty battery charges at whatever pace the 'gas' station deems necessary (maybe overnight when prices are lower) and the driver has a full charge within seconds. I'm almost certain I saw this idea put forth on/. in the past."

How's that going to help you at home? What if your car runs outta power at home after sitting for awhile, etc...?

First, have you SEEN the line at fuel stations? How many batteries do you need to stock to "refuel" all of the cars in a given day? Even if you have a one-hour charging system, you'll need a lot of batteries just to get through rush hour. Miles-per-charge is lower than miles-per-fuel-tank, so you'll need to change batteries more often, so those lines will be longer (hence the need for more batteries). Battery swaps are going to take at least 10 minutes, as

I think chargers where you have to hook it up manually everytime would be laborious. It would be cool if in middle of the engine compartment would drop down some type of charging unit, perhaps working by induction (if that can deliver), everytime you park. There would be some type of identification so that if the car isn't authorized, the mat wouldn't charge it.

Morever, public parking spots could use the identification to bill the appropriate party and everytime you park, you could be recharged. Or somet

Interesting possibility. Of course, the inductive charging system would weigh half what the batteries would, so your effective range is dropped, but as long as you have a valid recharge station within range of where you are going that day, you're good.

An expansion on that idea would be inductive charging on the highway. Solves the range problem right there. If you are going any distance, your car is charged along the way, so "100 miles per charge" would only count if you wanted to drive that 100 miles of

Something no one has ever mentioned on Slashdot, I think, is that the SAE J1772 electric car charger standard is designed for drunken morons to transfer well in excess of 15 KW, more or less continuously.

Frankly, I would not be surprised to see it become the new standard high power AC electric plug... think about it, one plug, worldwide, for very large server racks, SANs, electric clothes dryers, arc welders, big UPSes, generators, etc...

Tesla uses LiCo batteries, which are relatively slow. The Nissan Leaf is capable of an 80% charge in 30 minutes using faster LiMn batteries. A 15 minute charge is possible with even faster batteries, but by that point it's starting to get expensive.

That's mostly a sourcing problem. If you only have a 20Amp source, you can't ever charge at a rate greater than 20Amps. The thing is (and this varies quite a bit in the specifics with battery type), as a rule of thumb for the first 80% you can charge at extremely high charge rates. This is because internal resistance builds as you put charge into the battery.

You've probably seen 15minute quick chargers for AA NiMH and NiCAD batteries. These charge the first 80% or so with extremely high currents and then dr

It's a lot easier to put big, heavy, expensive emissions reducing and filtering equipment on a stationary power plant than it is to equip every single car on the roads. Further, more efficient engines can be built when they aren't restricted to weighing a ton or less, and when they don't have to stand up to the pounding and harsh environmental conditions that car engines experience.

Feel free to ask that question in any city that has "smog" problems for a quick answer. Power plants can be located outside city limits and easier to apply scrubbers to than a few million, small, mobile pollutant sources.